I’ll light the fire. You put the flowers in the vase (pronounced “vahz” of course) that you bought today. Staring at the fire for hours and hours while I listen to you play your love songs all night long for me, only for me! Come to me now and rest your head for just five minutes, everything is good. Such a cozy room, the windows are illuminated by the sunshine through them, fiery gems for you, only for you. Our house is a very, very fine house with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy cause of you and our house is a very, very fine house with two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard! Now everything is easy ’cause of you. I’ll light the fire. You put the flowers in the vase that you bought today.

*~*~*

It’s been a good year. It was a great Thanksgiving with new family members along with my husband and children and son-in-law-to-be and neighbors. Food was great on Thanksgiving and we had a marvelous day. Today was terrific for Roy and me also – relaxing and easy. We watched the dog play in her pen. We watched our 2 kitties playing in the yard. We lit a fire in our outdoor firepit. We drank a beer and made s’mores by the firepit. I made turkey stock from the turkey carcass. I made dried fruit bread for the holidays. I froze more of our Thanksgiving leftovers. Roy put away our outdoor furniture and cleaned up our acreage.

*~*~*

“Our House”

You light the fire. I’ll put the flowers in the vase (pronounced “vahz” of course) that I got today. (I’ll put maybe soup in the ‘vahz’ instead.) Staring at the fire for hours and hours while I listen to you play your love songs all night long for me, only for me! Come to me now and rest your head for just five minutes, everything is good. Such a cozy room, the windows are illuminated by the sunshine through them, fiery gems for you, only for you. Our house is a very, very fine house with two cats and one doggy in the yard. Life used to be so hard! Now everything is easy ’cause of you, and our house is a very, very fine house with two cats and one doggy in the yard. Life used to be so hard! Now everything is easy ’cause of you. You light the fire. I’ll put the soup in the ‘vahz’ that I got today.

*~*~*

*~*~*

*~*~*

Life used to be hard. We moved to a better life. We are moving forward!

There aren’t a lot of Thanksgiving songs out there, you know. This is an absolute classic, however, and Roy & I have made it a “family tradition” to play it every Thanksgiving. It just wouldn’t be the same without a little bit of Arlo Guthrie.

ALICE’S RESTAURANT

Arlo Guthrie

This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, and the

Restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,

That’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

Walk right in it’s around the back

Just a half a mile from the railroad track

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on – two years ago on

Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the

Restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the

Church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and

Fasha the dog. And livin’ in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of

Room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin’ all that room,

Seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t

Have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be

A friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So

We took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW

Microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed

On toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the

Dump saying, “Closed on Thanksgiving.” And we had never heard of a dump

Closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off

Into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn’t find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the

Side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the

Cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile

Is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we

Decided to throw our’s down.

That’s what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving

Dinner that couldn’t be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the

Next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, “Kid,

We found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of

Garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.” And

I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope

Under that garbage.”

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we

Finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down

And pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the

Police officer’s station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the

Shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the

Police officer’s station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at

The police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for

Being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and

We didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out

And told us never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again,

Which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer’s station

There was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was

Both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don’t think I

Can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on.” He said, “Shut up, kid.

Get in the back of the patrol car.”

And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the

Quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of

Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop

Signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the

Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,

Being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to

Get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of

Cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station.

“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?´ Erma Bombeck

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite fall/winter holiday, with the 4th of July being my favorite summer holiday. Thanksgiving though … geez … what better holiday can there be than to sit around all day and eat, having no one to say, “Ooooo, that’s bad for you, don’t eat that you might gain weight”!!! Everyone on that day is saying, “EAT! EAT! Try some of everything! Have more … already had a 2nd helping? So what … have a 3rd helping … and a 4th … you need to try everything.”

“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.” Jim Davis

Especially with life as tenuous as it is … and with the socio-economic and political systems in the chaos that they are (which I won’t go into currently at least as that’s not the point of my post here) … it’s such a relief to be able to be thankful for what we have. Even if it’s something little, being thankful for what we *do* have is a true gift in and of itself. If for no other reason than this, we should all be thankful just for being alive and with our families … or … for being alive and away from our families if that’s a better fit!

🙂

“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year … and then discover once a year is way too often.” Johnny Carson

With that, however, Roy and I are thrilled to spend Thanksgiving Day this year at our home with our son, Logan; our daughter, Kara; our future son-in-law, Alex; and Alex’s parents, Karen and Mark, & his youngest sister, Alivia (as 3 of our newest family members). We’ll miss seeing Alex’s brother, Marcus; Alex’s other sister, Kelsey, Kelsey’s husband, Ryan; and all of our other family members that can’t be there, but we look forward to seeing most of them over Christmas as well as at the wedding of Kara and Alex next July!

On November 23, 2002, I received an email from a random person from Maine that had the wrong email address and was trying to get in touch with a buddy in Boston. Normally, I would have ignored it. However, I could tell he was trying to set up some time to visit, so I sent a quick email back telling him he had the wrong email address. That spawned an online friendship. Five years to the day after that, we got married. It’s now been 11 years … and it’s our 6th anniversary.

We are probably the least likely couple you’d think of. He’s younger than me. He lived in Maine. I lived in California. We’d have had no reason in the world to have met unless it was supposed to happen. We both thought we were crazy. Anyone that knew us and heard about it thought we were crazy. I kept thinking that “this will never work”. So did Roy. However, we had to at least try … because … for both of us … we just knew!

“I’ve got you under my skin. I have got you deep in the heart of me, so deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me. I’ve got you under my skin. I’ve tried so not to give in and I said to myself, ‘this affair, it never will go so well’, but why should I try to resist, when, baby, I know so well that I’ve got you under my skin? I’d sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near, in spite of a warning voice that comes in the night, it repeats, repeats in my ear. ‘Don’t you know, you fool? You never can win. Use your mentality. Wake up to reality.’, and each time that I do, just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin, cuz I’ve got you under my skin. I would sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near in spite of warning voice that comes in night, it repeats how it yells in my ear. ‘Don’t you know, you fool; there ain’t no chance to win? Why not use your mentality? Wake up! Step up to reality!’ And each time I do, just the thought of you makes me stop just before I begin, because I’ve got you under my skin. Yeah, you grabbed me under my skin.” Frank Sinatra

We don’t believe in coincidence. I’ve mentioned this before. When people tell us what a “coincidence it is” that we met … or how “lucky” we are … we just laugh. It’s neither a coincidence nor luck.

… and more often than not, we look up and smile and know it was God …

So … God … we both thank you for bringing the joy that we have found after everything that we’ve endured over the years.

Life is good now … and while we’ve been through some MAJOR challenges over the years, this seems to be our general feeling of late:

“Still it’s a real good bet the best is yet to come. The best is yet to come, and, babe, won’t that be fine? You think you’ve seen the sun, but you ain’t seen it shine. Wait till the warm up’s under way … wait till you see that sunshine day. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Frank Sinatra

I will *NOT* allow it to knock me off track. Maybe it can be bad at times … and tonight isn’t one of my shinier times … and even though I want to just throw in the towel right now … which is illustrated particularly in my dinner of BBQ potato chips, cake with a huge chunk of frosting on it, ice cream, and a shot (or 2) of brandy …

Even so … I will win and I will come out on top as a success.

“Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up,” Thomas Edison

So I’ll end with this and exhort those of you out there in my position tonight to think the same. I hope those around you will celebrate it in you, but if they don’t, celebrate yourself anyway. Tonight I am celebrating myself NO MATTER WHAT.

“All of the significant battles are waged within the self.” Sheldon Kopp